As the world becomes more wired and electronic storage becomes cheaper than the cost of paper, the protection of information becomes paramount. The ease with which information can be copied and propagated causes serious information privacy issues. Keeping information safe and secure is thus one of the biggest issues facing the information technology (IT) industry today.
There are several areas of concern regarding the protection of information including the danger of unrecoverable loss of the information itself and defense against unauthorized copying of the digital information. Also, the control of access to the information may pose certain risk factors to the owner of the information and to the thousands of other organizations who hold copies of this information for business reasons. Ultimately, there may be a potential loss of financial opportunity based on the use of the information.
Although secure information vaults exist, there are no known mechanisms for leveraging such vaults for securely escrowing property, such as digital intellectual property, between two parties. A need for a secure escrow exists, for example, when escrowing development level representations (e.g., software, building designs, visual models, etc.) of property purchased or licensed at a representational level (e.g., executable code 3D models, movie elements, etc.) for the purposes of protecting the second party from injury if the first party does not fulfill contract requirements.
Another need exists when escrowing non-tangible, digital property during a series of negotiations. The secure escrow protects the parties that may be relying on the value of the property during interim steps in the negotiation. A similar need exists when escrowing tangible assets, as well as legal documents that have been digitally signed by the parties. Digital layaways are another type of transaction that would benefit from such a system.